stubbed toes and mud pies

[digitS']

I came home the other day to ..

. a House Finch singing in the backyard .

They don't always make it this far north and here it is the middle of March! Maybe he stayed the Winter ...

Oh, I have now seen 3 Robins. They are sometimes here thru the Winter but, where I have seen them hanging out before, they were nowheres about.

 

[Branching Out]

Very pretty iris, and such a gorgeous blue! Hang in there Flowerbug-- spring with all of its beautiful blossoms will be just around the corner.

 

[flowerbug]

i know things are getting closer when i start daydreaming of weeding and projects and try to make plans for the next long enough break in the weather to get outside. i have some chicken bones in the fridge to bury and some other scraps along with those that i won't want to put in the worm buckets, so those are slated for "soon" ... whenever that might be.

if the weather looks to be cooperating enough i'll see in a few weeks if i can poke some peas someplace and the first trial planting of sacrificial Purple Dove beans. because i don't know if they'll survive or not. but so far the past few years i've managed to get early plantings of them to survive.

today i finished up a project i've been working on for the past few months. there is still more work to be done, but this was the first part i really wanted to get done. data entry in some parts as i had to go back to old paper statements to type in the transactions. i've wanted to do this for a long time so i'm glad to have it done (1991 isn't that long ago), but i'm now up to date. company mergers are the messy times... ugh...

 

[flowerbug]

house finches are always trying to take over the ledge above my patio door. if i don't go scare them away when they first start to set up shop then it becomes a real pain in the butt to keep them away from that ledge. someplace around here i have some thin plywood that i cut to almost fit above there and i was and will sometime eventually put that up there and get it sealed up so that they can't make any nests up there. as much as i like the birdies i don't want them nesting there.

today was first spring peepers (tree frogs) and also the first day i did some digging in a garden to bury some bones/scraps. the soil was not as soggy as i thought it would be. i also did some weeding (since i was out there ) and picked an area where some grass was coming up again (i had to dig a hole, so why not there? two goals accomplished with one dig) so i could root it out.

we have a dry week coming up so it might be both cool and nice enough and also dry enough for me to get some digging and weeding done and also just general cleanup from winter stuff, etc. gardening season is getting here at last!

 

[flowerbug]

water wandering from yesterday's heavy rains


the berm is doing what it is supposed to be doing. the water is nice and clear coming off the south field this spring (they didn't plow it last fall - i don't know if anyone is farming it this season).

and the River Nile is flowing and not eroding as much as it could have. i did some work last summer down there to try to keep the headcutting from getting worse. i hope i can finally get this taken care of this year so it won't erode even more.

more context at:

Water | Anthive

Before you landscape, observe...

www.anthive.com

 

[flowerbug]

any of the cedar trees that were not protected by a fence got trimmed this winter:

 

[digitS']

We have cedar on the north side of the mountains. I didn't even know that deer would eat it until reading about your problems.

I wonder how it fares with the moose, now that we seem to have more of those critters.

The neighbor's arborvitae certainly could use some trimming but that is across the top. I suspect that some may blow down they are just incredibly tall.

 

[flowerbug]

i had to play deer herder this morning with two small deer feeding in the back yard. i didn't want to startle them into running into the fences so i went out quietly off to the side with a walking stick and then got their attention and then i encouraged them to move along. it took a few minutes but they finally got the idea and went the right way.

i was out yesterday walking the yard with a friend and there's one spot where the deer almost made it into the fenced gardens, so i have to repair that fence. i've not looked at the rest of them yet. probably a few places they've been tested or trampled a bit.

 

[flowerbug]

yesterday i took the fabric strip ties off the fenced gardens gate and then went in there to fix the two places that the deer ran over. this is the first time in many years that the deer went or tried to go through that fence. it's about a foot higher than the other fence i have up. the funny thing is that i could not find a single hoofprint or damage inside the fenced gardens themselves so i'm not really even sure that the deer got in but it did bend the top of the fence down a few feet and broke off a few of the wooden thin poles we put up to reinforce it a bit (wired to the metal poles). the whole fence is due to be repaired or replaced but that's not something i really want to do at this time.

normally if deer go through an area i can find hoofprints in the gravel pathways or in the gardens. so perhaps they didn't get in there?

then after finishing that up i went and thinned out some of the daffodils that were growing very crowded along an edge of the North Garden because i really don't want them to shade out the creeping thyme. and i did some weeding too while i was there.

so gardening season it is.

 

[flowerbug]

added some pictures to:

Daffodils | Anthive

More shy than stuck up...

www.anthive.com

Sparky is my favorite (oops, i messed up the label on that picture i'll fix it for the next upload). i don't think i have too many of those kind around. it's hard for me to keep track of them all to know for sure.